UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE INTERNATIONAL EXAMINATIONS
AS LITERATURE IN ENGLISH: SYLLABUS 9695
NOTES FOR TEACHERS ON STORIES SET FOR STUDY FROM
STORIES OF OURSELVES: THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE INTERNATIONAL
EXAMINATIONS ANTHOLOGY OF SHORT STORIES IN ENGLISH
FOR EXAMINATION IN JUNE AND NOVEMBER 2010, 2011 AND 2012
CONTENTS
Introduction: How to use these notes
1. The Fall of the House of Usher
2. The Open Boat
3. The Door in the Wall
4. The People Before
5. A Horse and Two Goats
6. Journey
7. To Da-Duh, In Memoriam
8. Of White Hairs and Cricket
9. Sandpiper
10. Tyres
Edgar Allen Poe
Stephen Crane
HG Wells
Maurice Shadbolt
RK Narayan
Patricia Grace
Paule Marshall
Rohinton Mistry
Ahdaf Soueif
Adam Thorpe
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These notes are intended to give some background information on each author and/or
story as an aid to further research and to stimulate discussion in the classroom.
They are intended only as a starting point and are no substitute for the teacher’s and
student’s own study and exploration of the texts.
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Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849)
The Fall of the House of Usher
This is one of the most famous gothic stories from one of the masters of the genre and
contains many of the traditional elements of the genre, including horror, death,
medievalism, an ancient building and signs of great psychological disturbance. The
mood of oppressive melancholy is established at the opening of the story and here
readers may note an acknowledgement of the appeal of gothic fiction: while there is fear
and horror, the shudder is ‘thrilling’ and the ‘sentiment’ is ‘half-pleasurable’.
At the centre of the story are mysteries, about the psychological state of Usher himself
and about his sister’s illness and death. The story only offers hints and suggestions;
there is an ‘oppressive secret’, while the sister, buried in a strangely secure vault,
returns as if risen from the dead to claim her brother. In archetypal gothic fashion, a
raging storm of extreme violence mirrors the destruction of the family and its ancestral
home.
Horror stories and horror films continue to have wide popular appeal and it is worth
considering why this is so, and in what ways this story fulfils the appeal of the horror
story. Why are Usher’s and his sister’s maladies never identified? What does Madeline’s
escape from the vault suggest?
Wider reading
Other gothic tales by Poe include The Masque of the Red Death, The Tell-Tale Heart
and The Black Cat.
The Woman in Black by Susan Hill
Compare with
The Door in the Wall by HG Wells
The Hollow of the Three Hills by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Online
Biographical material and a searchable list of works can be found at: http://www.onlineliterature.com/poe/
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Stephen Crane (1871-1900)
The Open Boat
This story is based on Crane’s own experience, when as a war correspondent, the boat
he was travelling on to Cuba sank. He and others spent a number of days drifting in a
small boat before reaching land. The story explores the fortitude of men in a shared
plight and their companionship in the face of danger. The narrative style is factual and
plain, perhaps mirroring the honest practicality of the men in the boat whose story is
being narrated. It engenders an admiration of the skilled seamanship and calm
demonstrated by the seamen. The drama in the story comes from the waves; the
seamen converse, swap roles and encourage each other under the guidance of the
captain. When they eventually reach shore, death comes to one of them, who is
‘randomly’ chosen. Without obviously aiming for pathos, Crane achieves it with the
oiler’s death. The story, like the seamen, betrays ‘no hurried words, no pallor, no plain
agitation’, but achieves a real sense of loss at its conclusion.
Wider reading
The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
Typhoon by Joseph Conrad
Compare with
The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allen Poe
How it Happened by Arthur Conan Doyle
Real Time by Amit Chaudhuri
Online
Biographical material and a searchable list of works can be found at: http://www.onlineliterature.com/crane/
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HG Wells (1866-1946)
The Door in the Wall
As well as famous novels such as The War of the Worlds and The Time Machine, HG
Wells wrote numerous short stories, many of which show the author’s interest in fantasy
and the improbable, but a feature of the stories is the way in which Wells creates a
sense of truthfulness in his narratives. This was demonstrated when a radio broadcast of
an adaptation of The War of the Worlds in 1938 caused panic in New York, and can also
be seen in the narrator’s concern with the truth of the story at the beginning of The Door
in the Wall.
Here the narrator is retelling the story of someone else, who in turn tells it to him with
‘such direct simplicity of conviction’. This creates a tension which remains throughout the
story, which on the one hand is ‘frankly incredible’ while we are assured that ‘it was a
true story’. The temporary childhood escape into the paradisiacal garden is evoked with
nostalgic longing, but remains inexplicable. The character’s final death leaves questions
for the reader; it is either another inexplicable event, or some kind of solution to the
mystery.
Wider reading
Try either of the novels listed above, or other short stories by Wells, such as The
Country of the Blind or The Diamond Maker.
Compare with
The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allen Poe
The Signalman by Charles Dickens
The Moving Finger by Edith Wharton
Online
Wells’ biography and a searchable list of works can be found at:
http://www.online-literature.com/wellshg/
An account of the New York panic can be found at:
http://history1900s.about.com/od/1930s/a/warofworlds.htm
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Maurice Shadbolt (1932-1985)
The People Before
Maurice Shadbolt is one of the towering figures of New Zealand literature, winning
numerous awards and accolades for his work, much of which examines the history of the
country through narrative. The central characters in this story are carving out a farming
existence on the land, and the importance of land ownership to the family is made
apparent in a number of phrases in the story. The narrator tells us that ‘my father took on
that farm’, he refers to the importance of ‘Land of your own,’ which becomes ‘your own
little kingdom’. The suggestions of the history of the land come through the discovery of
the greenstone adzes and attitudes to the land are brought to the fore with the visit of the
Maori group. Although Shadbolt characterises Tom Taikaka as pleasant, courteous and
patient, there is the constant underlying acknowledgement of the Europeans’ displacing
of the Maori from their land. Jim’s attempt at restoring the greenstone to Tom is symbolic
of an attempt at restitution, and the reader is left to interpret Tom’s reluctant refusal. The
return of the Maori elder to the land in death, and his disappearance, is another
indication of his unity with the landscape and again demonstrates the different attitudes
to land held by the Maoris and the Europeans, attitudes which remain polarised in the
brothers at the end of the story.
Wider reading
Strangers and Journeys or The Lovelock Version by Maurice Shadbolt
Playing Waterloo by Peter Hawes
Compare with
Journey by Patricia Grace
Her First Ball by Katherine Mansfield
The Enemy by VS Naipaul
Online
Biographical information and a critical review of Shadbolt’s work is available at:
http://www.bookcouncil.org.nz/writers/shadboltm.html
This newspaper obituary is also interesting:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article497710.ece
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RK Narayan (1906-2001)
A Horse and Two Goats
Narayan has written numerous novels and short stories, many of them set in Malgudi, a
fictional but typical small Indian town. His characters are invariably ordinary people
finding their route through Indian life. Although A Horse and Two Goats makes no
reference to Malgudi itself, it is typical of these stories, as Muni tries to live and ease the
burden of his poverty. The story is narrated with the non-judgemental understanding and
gentle humour typical of Narayan’s writing.
The narration emphasises the insignificance of the village, and by implication the
insignificance of its central character, who is coping with poverty and domestic struggle
and seeks to ease his way by deceit and invention. The big deceit of the story, though,
happens through misunderstanding and without Muni’s volition, Narayan creating
comedy through the two parallel lines of attempted dialogue between Muni and the
American tourist. Within the comedy, though, Narayan shows the different values of the
two, the American’s dialogue concerned with acquisition and possessions, while Muni is
concerned with history and spirituality.
Wider reading
The Guide (novel) and Malgudi Days (short stories) by RK Narayan
Kanthapura by Raja Rao
Compare with
Games at Twilight by Anita Desai
Of White Hairs and Cricket by Rohinton Mistry
Online
Information about RK Narayan is available at:
http://www.eng.fju.edu.tw/worldlit/india/narayan.html
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Patricia Grace (1937-)
Journey
Patricia Grace’s first novel, Mutuwhenua, was significant in being the first novel
published by a woman Maori writer, and she has become an important figure in Maori
writing in English in New Zealand. Journey shows her interest in the Maoris’ traditional
claims on land.
The rather dislocated narrative, with limited punctuation and no speech markings,
creates the effect of creating the old man’s perspective, although the narrative is written
in the third person. This old man’s perspective, with its old Maori wisdom, is shown to be
out of balance with ‘these young people’, the ‘cars and railways’, the new housing and
the growth of the city. His journey into the city makes him feel more and more alienated,
and this is accentuated when the narrative is interspersed with the interview dialogue.
The official and the old man cannot make each other understand. There is no
comprehension on either side of the other’s view of how land should be used, and the
story ends with frustration, violence and disillusion. In this story, Grace suggests that
traditional Maori governance of land has no place in modern government and planning.
Wider reading
Mutuwhenua (novel) or The Dream Sleepers and Other Stories (short stories) by Patricia
Grace
Playing Waterloo by Peter Hawes
The Bone People by Keri Hulme
Compare with
The People Before by Maurice Shadbolt
To Da-duh, In Memoriam by Paule Marshall
Online
Biographical and other information about Patricia Grace is available at:
http://www.artsfoundation.org.nz/patricia.html
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Paule Marshall (1929-)
To Da-Duh, In Memoriam
The narrator in this story remembers her visit from New York to her mother’s home
country, which to her is the ‘alien sight and sounds of Barbados’. The story hinges on the
relationship formed between the young girl and her grandmother, Da-duh of the title.
While the Caribbean is unfamiliar to the young girl, who sees it as ‘some dangerous
place’, Da-duh wants to show off its qualities, and a competition is established between
the girl and the grandmother, between youth and age, between modernity and tradition
and between New York and Barbados, which culminates in the girl’s assertion of the
height of the Empire State Building, which dwarfs all that Da-duh shows her. The young
girl’s triumph, however, is tempered at the end of the story by ‘the shadow’ of Da-duh’s
death.
Wider reading
This story is taken from Merle and Other Stories by Paule Marshall.
Compare with
Journey by Patricia Grace
Online
Information about Paule Marshall is available at:
http://www.answers.com/topic/paule_marshall
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Rohinton Mistry (1952-)
Of White Hairs and Cricket
This story’s concern with age and mortality is reflected in the structure, beginning with
the removal of the narrator’s father’s white hairs and moving to what seems to be his
friend’s father’s terminal illness. In the space of the story the narrator has his own
recognition of mortality and emerges from boyhood into the adult world. He moves from
considering distasteful his task of removing his father’s white hairs to a full awareness of
the process of ageing which he ‘is powerless to stop’. There are other signs of this
process throughout the story: the loss of the childhood cricket matches, the increasing
frailty of Mamaiji, the father’s vain hope of a new job. It is the encounter with the friend
Viraf, Dr Sidhwa and the glimpse of Viraf’s father which gives the narrator his epiphanic
moment.
Wider reading
This story is taken from the collection Swimming Lessons and Other Stories. You could
also try the novel Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry.
Malgudi Days by RK Narayan
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
Compare with
A Horse and Two Goats by RK Narayan
To Da-duh, In Memoriam by Paule Marshall
The Enemy by VS Naipaul
Games at Twilight by Anita Desai
Online
Biographical material is available at:
http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=auth73
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Ahdaf Soueif (1950-)
Sandpiper
The narrator in this story is unwilling to disturb even ‘one grain of sand’, and this reflects
her passivity as her relationship with her husband breaks down under cultural pressures.
The relationship with him is carefully charted, almost historically, but it is significant that
he is never named, and a sense of loss grows at the centre of the narrative. The
narrative structure includes disconcerting juxtapositions between memory and the
present to show the narrator’s sate of mind. The narrative describes a love between the
two formed elsewhere; it is the return to the husband’s country which creates the cultural
and family pressures on the relationship, including the loss of female independence,
work and identity, which cause the couple to drift apart.
Such concerns of conflicting cultural pressures are perhaps a natural concern of an
author born and educated in Egypt, before continuing education in England. She now
divides her time between Cairo and London.
Wider reading
This story is taken from a collection of short stories by Ahdaf Soueif, also called
Sandpiper. The Map of Love is a novel which deals with a love affair between an
Egyptian and an English woman.
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
Compare with
To Da-duh, In Memoriam by Paule Marshall
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Five-Twenty by Patrick White
Online
Biographical information about Ahdaf Soueif is available at:
http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=auth227
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Adam Thorpe (1956-)
Tyres
The narrative of Tyres is set against the tension of German-occupied France during the
Second World War, where relationships are strained, little can be openly communicated
and suspicion is rife. The brutality of war suddenly intervenes in the middle of the story
with the killing of the suspected members of the French Resistance movement (the
Maquis) and the villagers forced to view the bodies, their ‘guts…literally looped and
dripping almost to the floor’, before the hanging of the ringleader from the village bridge.
Set against this is the gradually developing love affair between the young lad learning to
maintain vehicles in his father’s garage and the girl who cycles past each day. The
young man’s narration leads the reader gradually to his final act of involvement with the
resistance against the Germans and its effects; ill-luck seems to be the cause of guilt,
and the final revelation of the age of the narrator shows how long that guilt and fidelity
has lasted.
In this story, Thorpe sets ordinariness – working on cars, changing tyres, a developing
relationship – against extraordinariness – the Second World War and German
occupation – to create a small poignant story of war.
Wider reading
This story comes from Adam Thorpe’s short story collection Shifts. His novel Ulverton is
a collection of very different narratives which piece together the long history of an
English village.
Compare with
To Da-duh, In Memoriam By Paule Marshall
The Moving Finger by Edith Wharton
The Taste of Watermelon by Borden Deal
Online
Biographical information and a review of Adam Thorpe’s work is available at:
http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=auth95
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